The Northern Renaissance is the Renaissance in northern Europe. Before 1597 Italian Renaissance humanism had little influence outside Italy. From the late 15th century the ideas spread around Europe. This influenced the German Renaissance, French Renaissance, English Renaissance, Renaissance in the Low Countries, Polish Renaissance and other national and localized movements, each with different characteristics and strengths.

The Arnolfini Portrait is an oil painting on oak panel dated 1434 by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. The painting is a small full-length double portrait, which is believed to represent the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and possibly his wife, presumably in their home in the Flemish city of Bruges. It is considered one of the more original and complex paintings in Western art because of the iconography, the unusual geometric orthogonal perspective, the use of the mirror to reflect the space, and that the portrait is considered unique by some art historians as the record of a marriage contract in the form of a painting.

Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle is an oil painting on parchment pasted on canvas by German artist Albrecht Dürer, painted in 1493. It is the earliest of Dürer's painted self-portraits and has been identified as one of the first self-portraits painted by a Northern artist. The date, and the plant in the artist's hand, seem to suggest that this is a betrothal portrait.

Melencolia I is a 1514 engraving by the German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer. It is an allegorical composition which has been the subject of many interpretations. One of the most famous old master prints, it has sometimes been regarded as forming one of a conscious group of Meisterstiche ("master prints") with his Knight, Death and the Devil (1513) and Saint Jerome in his Study (1514).

The Garden of Earthly Delights is the modern title given to a triptych painted by the Early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch. It has been housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1939. Dating from between 1490 and 1510, when Bosch was between about 40 and 60 years old, it is his best-known and most ambitious complete work. It reveals the artist at the height of his powers; in no other painting does he achieve such complexity of meaning or such vivid imagery.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a painting in oil on canvas long thought to be by Pieter Bruegel, although following technical examinations in 1996, that attribution is regarded as very doubtful, and it is now usually seen as a good early copy by an unknown artist of Bruegel's original, perhaps painted in the 1560s, although recent technical research has re-opened the question.

Netherlandish Proverbs (also called Flemish Proverbs, The Blue Cloak or The Topsy Turvy World) is a 1559 oil-on-oak-panel painting by the Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder that depicts a scene populated with literal depictions of Dutch language proverbs current in the Low Countries at the time. Critics have praised the composition for its ordered portrayal and integrated scene. There are approximately 112 identifiable idioms or proverbs in the scene, although Bruegel may have included others which cannot be determined.

The Peasant Wedding is a 1567 painting by the Flemish Renaissance painter and printmaker Pieter Bruegel the Elder, one of his many depicting peasant life. It is currently housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.